Me getting infodumped all your secrets because I don’t know how to leave a conversation
Meanwhile the other person who just learned of man made horrors beyond their comprehension that happened to me during childhood and adolescence:
“Well, it was nice seeing you. I’d shake your hand, but don’t touch me.”
Protip: That oversharing is a misuse of a legitimate conversational tactic where you’re sort of trying to “prime the pump” and get a both-people-sharing thing going. The problem arises when people generally don’t want to get particularly deep, early into most sorts of interpersonal relationships. Trying to do this anyway can leave people with a negative impression.
To get around this, there are other conversational tools. A useful one is the innocuous question, something like “oh, what was that like?” or “huh, how’d that go?” after a simple “what you been up to?”, “how’s your day going?” or somesuch. Even if you don’t really care, manufacturing the curiosity to dig a little deeper into surface-level things keeps the conversation flowing while avoiding getting into any actually uncomfortable topics. It can often open up into an opportunity for humorous observations or interjections, maintaining that lighter tone and keeping people comfortable with surface-level banter.
Conversation is a bit of an art, though, so its useful to develop a wide range of tools in your conversational toolbox for deployment in a wide variety of individual circumstances. Banter-heavy tv shows like Firefly can provide helpful templates if your real life situation does not give you much practice opportunity, though getting out into the world and practicing on random people is always necessary.
